


Cold Kisses

by whosKieren (EyeofOrion)



Series: Canon/meta Siren [1]
Category: In the Flesh (TV)
Genre: Kisses, M/M, it was an interesting idea so i wrote it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-28
Updated: 2014-10-28
Packaged: 2018-02-22 23:55:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2526350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EyeofOrion/pseuds/whosKieren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Simon wonders why it is they kiss even though their lips can’t feel anything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cold Kisses

It was a strange thing, for cold lips to kiss cold lips, knowing that neither mouth really felt the other; no warmth passed between them but the brush strokes of friction, and there were no live nerves to feel the breaths that sighed through parted lips, out of force of habit rather than necessity. How strange, for numb lips to kiss.

It was, Simon realised, much more complicated than living kisses. When the living kissed, it was so often because they loved to feel warm lips on their own and feel them move in time, to feel, _feel_ another living person so close to them. This, though – this was another animal. Kieren’s skin was cold and unfeeling, and yet… and yet he had still kissed him. That was complex. That meant the numbness was only skin deep.

They could still feel _something_ sexual, the undead, but it was the emotion of it: the want and the resolution of the want was still satisfying, even to cold bodies. _Want_. Simon mulled the word over in his head, hands loosely clasped in his lap, long after Kieren had left the bungalow with strict instructions to get some rest. It was a new thought, but a good one. Kieren _wanted_ Simon, just as Simon had wanted him since he first laid eyes on the strange, anxious boy who still visited his own grave.

The first time Kieren kissed him, it was because he wanted him.

There was a truth in it, that first kiss, as there always is in need. Kieren needed him, and he told him, not in so many words but in no words at all.

It was more complex even than that, though, really, if he thought about it. It wasn’t just a _thing_ ; it was communication. Sometimes, kissing said more things than words could, and, unlike words, the message never had to traverse the empty air between them. Simon was learning, he realised, to see the feelings in Kieren’s face, getting to know which subtle movements meant what. He had never found it easy, decoding faces, but, if he looked closely at Kieren, he could start to see the emotions behind his deer-lashed eyes tying themselves in knots, prodding at his anxiety because he couldn’t make them stay still, couldn’t make them make sense, couldn’t make them into shapes he could articulate. With a burgeoning understanding that grew every time he studied those tentative expressions, he saw the frustration in Kieren’s face; the ways he was limited by the lack of words in the English language that said what he wanted them to and by his own mind’s habit of writhing away from what he tried to make sense of.

So he did not speak. Instead, he turned to what he _could_ understand. If you kiss someone right, you can tell them that you care about them; that you’re glad they’re here; that what you want more than anything right now is to be with them; that they’re loved. _Loved_.

And so it was that Simon’s first taste of being loved like that in years came from cold lips that belonged to a boy who could never believe it himself, because he could never empathise with the ones who loved him, because he didn’t. A boy who understood its importance like nobody Simon had ever met.

The second time Kieren kissed him, it was because, in a way, he loved him.

When cold lips kiss, Simon thought with a clarity that rang, new and shining and brilliant, in his head, it’s not because they don’t realise they’re dead. It’s because they realise they are alive.

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from “[Cold Kisses (Magic Mirror)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UN1HSktcDWs)” - Dissonant Nation


End file.
